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gardenfaerie222 · 4 months

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Get in the Water: One-Shot

Pairing: Elain x Graysen (? sorta lol)

Rating: Mature

Summary: Elain kidnaps Graysen from his family home and forces him into the cauldron so he understands how she feels and what happened to her, and so they can be together forever.

Content Warning: violence, loss of a child, angst, PAIN

Note: This work was inspired by the lovely @bookishlyaries on tiktok! She kindly gave me permission to write this and anyone who reads this should watch the tiktok that inspired it! I guarantee it's a million times better haha

tiktok linked here! :)

Elain didn’t think there was such a thing as quiet in this new life. She sat silently on the bed in the room given to Nesta and her in the mortal manor, no effort left in her body to rinse the blood from her face and from the clothing given to her by the pale, white haired woman. Vivianne, she reminded herself, and she wasn’t a woman, she was a female. Just like Elain. Her hands were curled into fists in her lap, and the short nails bit into the skin of her palm as she clenched them. The coppery, metallic taste, still left in her mouth, stung with reminders of earlier in the day. What she had done. She wished she felt something, anything, about it. The only thing left in her heart was a dull ache, there was no room for remorse about who she had killed.

Murdered.

Stabbed in the back, fitting, Elain surmised.

In theory, she understood none of the people involved owed her any loyalty. They only owed their loyalty to Feyre, but didn’t that apply to her by association? The priestess, the man Feyre died for, her red-haired friend. Elain’s mate. They all owed Feyre some inkling of loyalty. At least the priestess was dead, and neither man would ever have what they wanted. She couldn’t bring herself to care. That man, male, she corrected, owed her nothing. No loyalty, no protection, nothing. She owed him nothing. Not forgiveness, or love, or her heart. She would give him nothing. She would never forgive him for what he took from her, what he tried to replace in her heart.

She was to be married, to a man who never even spared her a glance once all the fighting was done. He was supposed to love her, to care for her, to protect her. He promised, as good as made those vows to her. She had given him everything. Her maidenhood, her heart, her chance at any respectable match if he decided to cast her aside and anyone found out what they had done. She had done it for love. They had done it for love. Love that was supposed to overcome everything, love that would never change. It wasn’t supposed to change. She loved him with her whole heart and he promised her he felt the same. She knew he still did.

She twisted the iron band around her finger, enjoying the cool touch of it against her burning skin. It was still had the splattering of red crusted around it, and would have stained her fingers had they not still been covered in the blood of the man who ruined her life. They weren’t far from the fortress that would have once been her home, in a different life. In this life, if the fae thought about anything outside of themselves. She could hear everything. The slither of a snake in the grass, the clang of metal outside, amongst tents housing celebrating mortals and fae, drinking themselves into a stupor. Elain couldn’t recall a time she had ever been drunk. She had drank, of course. A glass of sparkling mortal wine, maybe two if she was feeling bold enough to endure the stares of mothers sniffing down their noses at her.

She had taken it all for granted, then. The happiness, the dancing, the demur looks shot at the most handsome lord attending that night. She was a princess in that world, and this one too, she supposed. The sister of the first High Lady of Prythian. A poor recreation of how her life should have been. A princess, dancing the night away with her knight on her arm.

She could still feel the perfectly respectful glide of his hand against her arm, her waist, their hands barely touching as they danced. He had filled her dance card all night, a not perfectly respectful thing to do, but she didn’t mind. She felt an instant connection to him, fated, to dance together all night. She remembered smiling up at him through lashes, his eyes like pools of glistening water, crinkled at the edges with the smile on his full lips. He was so handsome, her knight. Tall, with dark hair that reminded her of the warmed chocolate drink her father had once brought her from a ship when she was a child. They complimented each other, dancing together. Her own honey colored hair shining under the lights of the ballroom, almost brushing the hand he held at her waist.

They had glided around the room, her satin skirts twirling around her legs. She had been beautiful, and Elain knew he had agreed. She didn’t care that the face she didn’t recognize in the mirror was now somehow more beautiful than she had been. She had, she had been beautiful and Graysen knew it. He instantly started courting her, calling on her, leaving her gifts to showcase his affection. He was going to marry her, and her heart ached at the thought of what happened after. The night they spent, tangled together and underneath the blanket covering them. The love that had poured from her heart as he kissed her, and then kissed the ring on her hand, whispering his vows into her ear like it was something sensual. It had been. Those promises of love, and care, and providing. She knew he had meant them. Meant them in that moment they shared, and forever.

She could still feel the whispered caress of his breath against the shell of her ear as he promised, “I’ll love you forever Elain, no matter what. No matter what happens. You are mine, and I am yours. Mind, body and soul.”

It had felt like a prayer, and she the goddess he was worshipping. Everything had gone wrong after. The fae, and the creatures in the night stealing her from her bed. Somehow, they were different, those men with wings who came with her sister with warnings of war. They had vowed to protect Nesta and her, but she was coming to the conclusion that all fae were liars, unlike the stories said. The opposite of what the stories said, actually.

After days of false promises, they came in the night. Those creatures that ripped her from her bed in nothing but her nightgown, barefooted as she fell unconscious and woke in a small cell that stunk of urine and vomit, Nesta holding her protectively to her side, barring her teeth and snarling at anyone who looked too close at Elain. Already more fae then human, Elain realized, looking back. She could still feel like bite of their claws in her arm as they tugged her up and away from her sister, dragging her into the mockery of a throne room by her hair as she had cried out. There had been so many people in that room. Her sisters, those fae who had vowed to protect them, the beautiful blonde who she would later learn was the priestess who betrayed them. The red-headed male and the male Feyre had died to protect were there too, as well as what was left of the mortal queens, and the fae king. Some laugh, and some cried, as the king ordered she be put into that dark abyss they called the cauldron.

The first thing she remembered was the bite of cold, and the darkness. She felt like she lived in there for an eternity, twisting and turning in the water feeling something slithering against her skin but never turning fast enough to catch a glimpse of it. She could breathe normally there, somehow. Some kind of magic, most likely. It had felt like days before the cool caress against her body gripped her arms, holding her still, as it finally spoke to her.

“What do you desire, Elain Archeron?” it had hissed into her ear.

“I wish for nothing,” She whispered back, keeping her eyes ahead even as her body trembled under it’s grasp.

A mockery of laughter echo’d around her at her answer.

“I don’t believe you,” it had purred, the grip tightening, curling further around her.

“I swear I wish for nothing,” her voice was still terrified, her eyes still fixed on nothing in the murky darkness, “All I want is to go home,”

It seemed to study her for a moment, that essence of the cauldron surrounding her.

“You have something we wish for Elain Archeron, in exchange, we will let you escape with your life,” She startled, once again trying to twist in it’s arms to look at it, to demand what it wanted from her face to face.

“I don’t understand,” She whimpered, the tears starting to race down her cheeks, “I have nothing I can offer you.”

It laughed at her again, distorted and cruel, something she couldn’t see brushing away the tear that dripped to her jaw.

“You do,” it whispered, cold hands gripping her hips, fingers curling around her lower stomach.

They didn’t feel right. The fingers too long, too thin, too sharp to be human. Horror rushed through Elain’s body as the realization hit her, fighting in the grip it held on her, her tears pouring hotter and faster, her legs kicking. She was screaming, she realized, screaming for what it wanted to take from her. Something she didn’t even realize she had.

“No, no, no,” She begged, the word a prayer on her lips even though she had no gods to pray to, “please, no.”

“We will take this from you,” it murmured, a cruel mockery of a lovers whisper, “and in exchange, we will give you a gift. A pretty gift, of equal value."

She didn’t stop fighting, or screaming, or pleading, not as she felt the beginning of the change. She was changing. It hurt. Gods it hurt. She was screaming from the pain now, the pain of something being ripped from her, and the pain of feeling herself be remade. Her body like clay in the hands of the creature that held her, pulling and tugging and reshaping her in it’s image. She screamed for hours, the pain unbearable. She screaming until she was sure she had torn her vocal cords and she could make nothing but a sort of pathetic whining sound. She pleaded for it to just kill her, in that broken whisper she was sure it understood. She never stopped crying, not until the grip on her lessened and she rapidly approached some kind it light above her heard, and it left her with a whisper echoing in her mind as she breached the surface and was washed onto the cold stone, her nightgown sheer and even the leering laughter couldn’t clear the last thing the creature said to her, cruel humor in it’s tone,

“We give you our gift, Elain Archeron, and thank you for ours.”

The days and weeks after that passed in a blur. She had lived a lifetime in the cauldron, had died in the cauldron, and everything else felt like borrowed time. She wasn’t allowed out of at least one person’s sight. Normally Nesta. Nesta was scared she would try to jump out of one of the airy windows with no glass, and Elain couldn’t entirely fault her for that. She had lost everything. Her fiancé was on the other side of the wall, and what the cauldron had taken from her, what she had lost. She couldn’t even think the word. The mere thought of her brought her to tears.

Then, Feyre had returned, and the humans, gods, the humans. She had felt the wall fall, and she knew who could help them. Who was true of heart. Who would do the right thing. She went to him with her sisters and she had begged him to help them, and deep in her heart to help her, to accept her as she was, glamoured or not, and he had cast her aside. Like she was nothing, like he didn’t love her the way she knew he did. He had whispered his love in her ear like a prayer days before she was taken from him and when she returned, she was nothing better than trash in his eyes. He had even demanded his ring back, the ring she still wore for comfort, twisting around her finger when she was nervous.

She knew he was just scared. Scared of the war, of the fae converging on his home, of her. She could make it better, she knew she could make it better. She could make him see her again. Show him her heart was still the same no matter was skin she wore, what torture she endured. She just needed him to understand. To see her again. To be like her again.

Her fingers curled into the blanket underneath her as she stared blankly at the wall in front of her. That was the issue, wasn’t it? They were different now. He couldn’t understand, he couldn’t be like her. Even if he did, she would stay like this, she thought with disgust, a sneer curling it’s way across her lips, forever. Young and beautiful, and doomed to watch her beloved grow old without her, die without her.

She would be alone for eternity, because she could never make Graysen understand.

***

There was whispering outside her door, too low for ever Elain’s fae hearing to truly pickup. She gently tossed the soft blankets off of her recently cleaned body and changed clothes, glancing quickly at Nesta, sleeping soundly beside her. She must have washed the blood away, Elain surmised. She placed her feet on the ground, near silent, as she inched closer to the door to hear what was being discussed. She pressed a pointed ear to the crack, and waited.

“… Worried about her,” The voice of her sister murmured, and she heard the inhale of breath from her sister’s mate.

“I understand, Feyre darling, truly,” His voice murmured back, and she could imagine him grabbing her sister and pulling her close, by the sounds of their scuffling feet.

She heard the sharp intake of breath her sister took, “She killed someone Rhys, that’s not something someone just gets over,” Her sister breathed back to her mate.

Elain could picture Rhys nodding his head, holding her sister lovingly, all the things Graysen would have done for her, as he replied, “One thing at a time, Miryam and Drakon will take the cauldron tomorrow, and then we can worry about your sisters.”

She listened to their feet shuffle off, obviously trying to be quiet as to not wake anyone. The Cauldron, gone. That looming presence over her life. Always calling to her, it’s song on the wind like a siren. She took the moment to briefly wonder if she would still hear it’s call to her in that hidden city across the sea. That final link to her past life, what was stolen from her life, gone. She couldn’t bear the thought.

All links to Graysen gone, tied up with a neat little bow to keep her family happy. He hadn’t even looked at her, for her, in that final stand. She needed to know he still cared for her, outside the watchful eye of his father and the fae that eyed her carefully, like she was a porcelain doll set on the corner of the table, centimeters away from tumbling off the edge. She listened closer for a moment, trying to hear any more scuffled feet or hushed voices, but all she heard was silence. That’s when she made her choice.

***

Elain paid no mind the branches scraping at her face or arms, the twigs catching in her hair, or the unsteady ground underfoot. A determination had settled in her bones as she made her way to the Nolan Fortress. She hadn’t shared with Feyre she knew a way in, around the guards where no one would ever see her. A way shone to her by a boy in love. A man in love. Her fae footsteps were near silent as she finally made it into the fortress. It was practically a compound, with all the human soldiers and civilians housed within. She didn’t think she could ever forget the steps to get to Graysen’s chambers no matter how much her body had changed or when her human memories began to fade from her mind and her heart. This walk would stay burned in her subconscious forever.

She silently pushed the door open, stepping inside and inhaling the familiar scent of pine and brandy. It was so much stronger to her fae senses, intoxicating as she breathed in deeply. She could see him sleeping, sprawled across his bed, through the open doorway from the sitting room to the bedroom. He looked no older than a boy like this, the worries that plagued his waking thoughts and creased his brow smoothed over in the world he walked in his dreams. Elain hoped she was in it, something he still yearned for, if not in his waking moments, then perhaps in his subconscious.

She carefully moved towards him, keeping an eye on her steps as she stood next to his bed and took him in. He was so heartbreakingly handsome, she mused, sweeping the hair from his brow. He stirred slightly in his sleep, his brow furrowing, and she leaned forward to press her lips to it, to smooth the worry of whatever was plaguing him. She watched his eyes flutter open, and she took the moment to enjoy his sleep muddled gaze on her face as he took in who, exactly, had kissed his brow before he shot straight up in his bed, moving as far from her as he possibly could.

“Gray,” Elain murmured, careful to keep her voice quiet but loud enough for him to hear, worry coursing through her veins as she just looked at him, “it’s just me, it’s okay.”

He looked bewildered, taking her in, still in her nightgown, barefooted and hair down, loose leaves caught in the long tresses.

“You need to get out,” he whispered harshly, still leaning as far as he could from her.

“Gray, I love you,” She pleaded, feeling the tears bite at her eyes as she held a slim hand to her breast, “Gray, please.”

“You disgust me,” he snarled, looking more fae than she did in that moment. Elain felt something in her break as she recoiled as if he had hit her. She wished he had hit her. The undiluted hatred for her on his face made her chest burn. She felt the salty burn in her eyes as she just started at him.

“I haven’t changed,” She whispered, begging the man in front of her to see her, “I’m still the woman you fell in love with.”

He laughed, and it tasted bitter in the air, polluting the room they occupied, “You’re not a woman Elain, you’re not even human.”

She heard it then, that song on the wind, calling to her, letting her know it was there for her, it wanted to care for her, help her. She felt it in her bones, if she called to it, it would answer. She inched closer to Graysen, and as he moved to push her away, she gripped his arm and they disappeared from the stone fortress.

Once Elain’s vision cleared, she took in room they were standing in. All of it was wooden, and the creaking and swaying gave away what they were on, a boat. One of Miryam and Drakon’s, if she had to guess from what Feyre had whispered to her mate earlier. She noticed it then, that purr that filled the small, dark, and damp room they were standing. That purr the cauldron released in her presence. It remembered her, remembered the gift she had given it, Elain realized with nauseating clarity. She turned, quiet and trancelike, to the man she had brought here who has huddled in a corner as far away from her as he could get. She tilted her head, taking him in.

“This is what made me, Gray,” Her voice was no higher than a whisper, but it filled the whole room, “this is what I was forced into, turned against my will, and I disgust you?”

Something seemed to stutter from his lips, but Elain cocked her head to the side, letting the ache in her heart be replaced with resentment and anger, his snarled words a brand on the muscle.

“I would have given anything for you Graysen, I gave you everything,” there was a calm to her voice, a resignation even with her eyes lined with silver, “you vowed to protect me, and where were you when I was stolen from my bed?”

“Elain, I-“ He started but she snarled, stopping him.

“Don’t talk over me,” His eyes were glued to her face, distinctly avoid what was so obviously taking up most of the space in the room, “You made me vows, Graysen, and you never upheld them. You turned your back on me, you left me to ROT!” She was screaming now, she didn’t know when she started to raise her voice, but by the end he was shaking, that self-righteous disgust in his eyes replaced by fear.

“I love you, Gray,” She pleaded, reaching a hand for his face, but the sting of him still turning away from her pulled her heart further in two, “and I know how we can be together forever.”

“Elain no,” He moved, trying his hardest to back further against the wall, “Elain, please, don’t do this-“

She cut him off with a shake of her head, nodding towards the cauldron bubbling in the center of the room, like it expected it’s new gift any moment.

“Get in the water,” Her voice was calm, but the tilt of her head and the silver rimming her eyes betrayed her desperation.

He shook his head at her, not even standing, and she repeated herself, “get in the water,” She watched as she started to shake his head again, and she held up her hand to stop him, “or I’ll release this on the humans and you can tell your family goodbye.”

She could smell his fear, his stumbling steps as he pushed himself to stand, but made no further movement, “get in the water,” she ordered, a bead of silver leaking from her eye. She didn’t want him to be afraid, she wanted him to understand. He’d never understand unless he’d been through what she had.

“Wait,” He tried to plead with her, but she shook her head, more tears leaking from her eyes as she took a deep breath and looked up before meeting his eyes again.

“Get in the water,” She ordered again, nodding her head towards the cauldron which just seemed to bubble more in anticipation.

He stepped closer to her, begging as he said, “Stop this, please,” but she stepped further away, shaking her head at him.

She felt the pain blooming in her head, her tears running fast down her checks, “I would drown for you! I did drown for you!” her voice broke on that memory, that pain she refused to speak about, “Your wife and your son drowned and you won’t do the same for us?” She didn’t even know if he could understand the words pushing through her sobs as she took him in, as her heart broke, “We DIED!” She cried, the rage bubbling in her gut exploding.

“No!” Graysen’s voice broke, stepping closer to grip her arms.

“Get in the water!” Her voice was still raised, her soul still pouring out through the tears flowing furiously from her eyes.

“A Son?” He wept, stepping close enough to grasp her upper arms, and placing his back to the cauldron.

She pressed against his shoulders, forcing him against the lip of the cauldron, “GET IN THE WATER!” she screamed, pain and heartbreak written across her face. The life she would have had with her child lost in the same depths she lost her humanity in. Then, she pushed, her fae strength overpowering him as he lost his balance and tumbled backwards into the inky, bubbling depths.

She didn’t know how long to leave him in it, how long she had been in the cauldron. She couldn’t take it much longer, the ache of being alone in the room with this thing, no one to comfort her or to care for her, and after a few minutes she pushed the lip to dump it over, and in a torrent of waves crashing against the walls of the small room, Graysen fell out with it. She breathed a sigh of relief, rushing to his side. She gripped him in her arms, smiling as she called him name, but he was cold, and his eyes didn’t flutter open as she shook his shoulder. She shook him again, harder, and then again, calling his name over and over with a more frantic need each time. He never responded, and he stayed cold.

That was when Elain let loose a gut wrenching, heart piercing scream.

Note: Sorry if it starts getting a bit loopy towards the end, I wrote this all in one sitting and finished at 1 in the morning haha. I hope whoever reads this thoroughly enjoyed my take! Also I couldn't for the life of my figure out if the cauldron fell over on it's own or if it was pushed over and I didn't want to go grab my ACOMAF book so sorry for inconstancies if there is any! Also can't remember if Ianthe is in the throne room when the sisters get turned so if that's wrong too I'm sorry!

Thank you so much for reading!!

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